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Quick Look: Winds of Numa Sera

Designers: Jonny Handler, Morgan Rosenblum
Artists: Reza Afshar, Luigi Aimè, Andrey Astahov, Philipp Kruse, Eduardo Mello, Alessio Moroni, Eduard Petrovich, Ren Spiller, Valentina Taddeo
Publisher: Darkrose Studios
Year Published: 2025

No. of Players: 4

Ages: 14+

Playing Time: 90-120 minutes.

Find more info HERE.

From the Publisher:

As the leader of your people, your goal is to amass resources and create the most powerful kingdom in all of Ethera so your name will be remembered long after you are gone. There are several ways to achieve this: by conquering strongholds, slaying your

Disclaimer: The publisher provided the Collector’s Edition of Winds of Numa Sera. The opinions expressed in the review are completely my own.

Review:
 

When I first encountered it, Winds of Numa Sera seemed to be the kind of game that would command a very strong first entry into the world of tabletop gaming from Darkrose Studios.

Thematically tied to a successful graphic novel that had been produced via crowdfunding, the game sports similarly inspired art that serves as the backbone of the game’s central premise of conquest, and maintains a consistency that should appeal to both newcomers and fans of the original work that spawned it.

I won’t bore you with too many of the fine details surrounding my initial discovery of Winds of Numa Sera , but I will say that despite my intrigue with the promising game system, I did have a few concerns that led me to judge it a bit preemptively. 

Firstly on the positive side, the game seemed to be :

—Aesthetically pleasing

—Sophisticated use of cards

—Asymmetric 

—Highly interactive and political

On the “negative” side, when first encountering it, I did also have the following concerns, however…

—The game would no doubt be exclusively highly competitive. Something usually a red flag for my regular game group.

—The game was also, as noted, tied to a graphic novel ; How dependent would one’s enjoyment of the game be on their ability to comprehend what had happened in the book? 

And for reference, I will say that as implausible as this may sound as a potential turn-off, I have played and reviewed games that were tied into a series of novels in the past, and subsequently felt like I was “missing out” on something since various game setups were supposedly mirroring events from specific books in the series. This left me with a bit of a hollow and empty feeling that made it feel “essential” for me to seek out the books afterwards, which wasn’t necessarily as rewarding as I had hoped it would be.

On its surface, Winds of Numa Sera’s graphic novel (which they also sent to me), fails to disappoint. Its artisanal quality is immediately apparent, and it is equally adept at independently setting up the lore and political  backdrop of its world without a hitch. It does sport a few instances of strong profanity for those who have kids and need cautioning on this level, as well as a few bloody depictions here and there, but these instances by no means dominate the spectrum of content in the presentation, whose central focus is, again, setting up the story of four separate kingdoms in their clash for supremacy. 

And while the novel itself embellishes in staging this geopolitical drama, the board game itself keeps it simple by providing a brief summary (on player boards) of each kingdom and what they represent with their strengths. It doesn’t get needlessly complex and leave you wondering as to the intrigues of the game world, and simply stands independently as a setting in which multiple factions vie for power—much as is the norm with games such as Twilight Imperium. 

While my wife and I read the novel in advance, the other players we experienced the actual board game with did not feel like they were at a loss for anything, which will hopefully dispel any doubt that you need to first experience the novel to play the game to its full benefit. So let’s just get that concern out of the way before we delve into gameplay…

The Game Itself : 

For the purposes of this review, let me state that the publisher provided the Collector’s Edition of Winds of Numa Sera, so please take this into consideration when I describe various aspects of components.

Other than player boards and a single die, the game almost entirely consists of a tarot-sized card system. 

One of the things that initially captivated me when reading about Winds of Numa Sera was the political intrigue. With players not only able to choose from four totally asymmetrical factions and kingdoms consisting of the Numa Sera, Mera, Siam De’e and Dena Vale, the game description also seemed to describe a Twilight Imperium-esque style of trade and negotiation, which is something that I had never really encountered outside of a traditional, tile-based 4x game. And please know that even though Winds of Numa Sera makes no claim of being a 4x game, it certainly feels like it is right-off-the-bat. And part of this is due to the more “human” nature of interaction in the game, since you are not limited to simply following the game’s flow chart round after round — you can strike up a deal any time outside of combat in Winds of Numa Sera.

Each kingdom does indeed sport its own distinct style and strengths. One is for instance by nature more aggressive and geared towards combat, while another may be better suited for defensive posturing, and another may be good at finding ways to gain supplemental income.

The goal of the game is assert dominance not thru gaining Victory Points (contrary to popular norm), but rather being the first to complete two out of four acts of supremacy in the game world, which include the following :

—Unlocking 5 player classes

—Slaying 2 rival player’s Champions (each player has 3, as one is killed off, another with new abilities will replace it as a sort of Heir).

—Fully mastering 2 out of 5 Skills.

—Controlling 4 strongholds at once.

This may seem like a trivial or small list of requirements to meet, but trust me, this can be quite a daunting task to achieve! 

A game round is roughly (though not exactly) structured in phases as follows :

Phase 1 : Earn passive income / activate abilities that commence with the start of the round

Phase 2 : Take turns buying items/skills until all players pass.

Phase 3 : Players draw Exploration cards with all sorts of potentially good or bad effects

Phase 4 : Take Command (buffing) Actions, then either declare attacks or instead elect to build up your Kingdom’s tech tree.

This cycle will continue with players gaining all sorts of benefits, boons, and pieces of equipment until a player meets two of the aforementioned victory conditions. 

With this serving as a crude summary of gameplay, let me help you digest all of this as I break down the game’s strengths (and weaknesses) in more elaborate detail.

The Strengths : 

Firstly let us talk about the player boards, which thanks to the use of a laminated surface, will constantly be modified with included dry erase markers throughout the course of the game with revisions of each player’s core stats. Measures of Strength, Defense, Power, and Residual Income garnished per round will constantly be adjusted through the course of the game, and the allocation of dedicated spaces for marking these ever-ebbing stats is part of what makes Winds of Numa Sera both immersive and impactful. But in addition to these, the boards are designed in such a way as to also be able to easily track and mark important features such as upgrades to weapon/armor slots and game objectives. 

You can literally monitor and update every vital aspect directly on the player board, in addition to utilizing a double-layered recess for holding your Kingdoms’ various Champions. 

In addition, the player board lets you denote your progress on your tech trees, clearly denoting the paths of advancement available and those which you have already obtained/researched. 

—The player boards are in essence epitomization of both stylistic and functional design. 

—A central game board is equally utilitarian, housing components such as a World deck (that contains items to buy), the Exploration Deck and more. 

—Gameplay sequences are very streamlined and intuitive. The Battle System leaves little to no guesswork, but still manages to be complex in its implementation via a sort of checks-and-balances system that allows you to counter your rivals tactfully, even when it may appear at a glance that you have “lost” a battle. 

—Each Kingdom / Faction is very unique from each other. Perhaps too unique…(more on this later).

—The game feels like a 4x game, despite lacking the usual tile-based systems used in such games. There is exploration (in limited form), exploitation, extermination for sure. Whether or not there is any literal “expansion” could be subject to debate, but it is a consideration I would allow for someone to say that Winds of Numa Sera could  in fact be seen as a legitimate 4x game (if acquiring a stronghold could theoretically be seen as “expanding”).

—An abundance of items, allies (called Mavens) as well as simple yet elaborate ways to upgrade your items.

—Not a lot of down time between turns, with many stages happening simultaneously.

—While this game could be played with players choosing to just take their turns independently, a big part of the charm occurs if and when people choose to bribe, entice, lure, and otherwise meddle with their rivals. You can sell an item to rivals to help them defend themselves, for example, only to have them subsequently use said item against you later on, or maybe even pay another player to diplomatically spare you in the next round of attack (but there is never any guarantee that they will follow through with their terms). As such, this makes for a great deal of unpredictability when using this more sandbox-like approach to interaction.

—Even when I factor in the usual norm that my gaming group cannot stand competitive games, Winds of Numa Sera somehow alleviates this malady. I think this is mainly due to the progression of the game, which likely has direct player-versus-player conflict appear mostly in later stages of the gameplay (after independent strongholds have been mostly conquered). This can help mitigate the tension. 

—Despite this type of game usually being an anathema to my group, everyone walked away from this experience viewing it in a positive light, which was rather surprising for me. I didn’t hear people complaining about the competitive nature of the game at all—and I had been mentally preparing myself for some sort of backlash for having brought this game to a friends’ house!

—The rulebook for Winds of Numa Sera is elegant, a paradigm in how to do this properly. Best of all, despite its 30-ish pages, there is zero unnecessary redundancy clogging the learning experience. In terms of size dimensions, it offers a perfectly concise way to learn a decently complex game without bogging down or boring a reader.

—Superlative component quality all around. There are almost no weak links in the fabrication of the collector’s edition. Everything from the metal coins to clearly defined player boards, to art, everything just oozed professional charm. 

The only exception to this might be the included card sleeves, where I had several split and rendered useless upon placing cards in them, but thankfully, this is a moot point since the dev team was wise enough to include a good abundance of spare sleeves just in case, which made the problem essentially non-existent. 

—The box size is very modest, yet holds a lot of meat and substance despite this seemingly limiting factor. 

—Combat is highly structured yet adaptable. Foresight and good planning is rewarded, as there are some nice ways to affect and mitigate consequential results in each fight. It feels like a cleverly crafted game of tug-of-war, being again theoretically simple, yet situationally profound. 

—Exploration cards can throw a monkey wrench or boon into almost any situation, making for yet another sense of shifting tides in the field.

—Lots of items to equip to various armor slots. From helmet and chest to weapons and backpacks, there is a lot to customize for your Champions during gameplay.

—Bountiful ways to upgrade character abilities and items as well.

—Battle Cards gained in the exploration deck can be implemented to shift the tide, but also usually carry a drawback, so careful consideration is required prior to using these!

—Even when sleeved, everything fits in the box perfectly! You have no idea how many times I need to throw away inserts these days due to lack of proper storage design. Not the case with Winds of Numa Sera. 

—This game sets up and tears down unbelievably swiftly, which is impressive given the level of complexity it evokes.

The weakness: 

Now despite the observation of many strengths, there are some drawbacks that we felt while playing WInds of Numa Sera

—Firstly,  though the presentation and layout of Winds of Numa Sera could not possibly get more streamlined and efficient , there are nevertheless oodles of details to keep track of during gameplay. One would think that being able to constantly reference our player boards that had been constantly updated with our markers each time we equip a new weapon or gain a new character ability would eliminate this problem, but it ironically does not. This is largely due to circumstantial nature of the many of the bonuses granted by items and abilities and upgrades; some can only be used in Hero vs Hero Combat, some can only be used versus other player’s strongholds, and yet other sets of bonuses are only valid during conflicts against independent strongholds or when other prerequisites are met. So regardless of how well documented you think you are, you will likely always still need to do a double or triple check to make sure you tallied up every variable while in battle.

—The Table Space. Yikes. I have encountered this problem quite frequently lately in making the erroneous presumption that small/medium sized boxes would mean that the game would take up an equally small portion when set up. The fact that all players will need to maintain a continuous spread of items, inventory and player boards using tarot-sized cards will mean that you will be consuming quite a bit of table space ; enough that it may indeed rival something like Twilight Imperium in its own respective way. 

—4 players are needed. I was told by the devs that while the game is functional with 2 and 3 players, 4 is the best. And now I can see why. This game depends on the deep interactions between players to get the most out of. Everyone at the table agreed that they couldn’t imagine doing this at lesser player counts satisfactorily.

—The game ended up taking significantly longer than the prescribed 60-90 minutes noted in the box description. Even after a few games under our belt, it was clocking in at 3 hours or more. Perhaps this would change with more experience, but for now, this seems to be our norm.

—Having just 4 factions seems limiting. If two people in your group favor the most aggressive / combat oriented play style, one of them will be out of luck…Thankfully, there are many ways to win the game though!

—I will also add that the Numa Sera faction almost starts with a sort of disadvantage for new players. I say this because one of their Champions requires an almost innate / a priori understanding of the mechanics of other player Champions to use effectively. This is because this particular Numa Sera Champion can “copy” enemy abilities once per round, so you must always be aware of what other Champions are in play and what they can do. This can easily be forgotten and neglected, leading to a lack of proper utilization and optimization of turns. 

—You can gang up on a single player. This happened a few times with us, and under rather comical situations we could all laugh at. Other groups may not handle this aspect so well, but for us, it came up as we noticed that a certain other player had been sitting quietly amassing a fortune by avoiding conflict and thus been able to get ahead in purchasing some of the requisites for winning. So yes, it did become essential to target their sources of extra income…

Final thoughts:

I can only think of a handful of times where I have had a very tough call attributing a final score to a game. In a sense, I am still very much digesting Winds of Numa Sera and trying to determine what exactly might give me pause in giving it a high score. And I may need to update my score as time goes by, as I have done with a few other games in my collection. 

And I think part of this reason I am having difficulty may have to do with the fact that Winds of Numa Sera feels so different, almost ahead of its time, causing a sort of cognitive dissonance within me. Maybe I am still expecting to have this type of game sport hex-based tiles and not allow my experience to register properly in my mind as a result. But there is indeed a sort of inner tension that lies unresolved within me.

On the one hand, if I were to judge the game on the basis of production quality alone (which is all superlative), the game would get an easy 10/10. Now of course, I cannot do that.  But it remains to be said that for a first time publication, this is really an exemplary production that manages to outdo manufacturing runs even from far more “experienced” dev teams I have encountered throughout the years. 

I do personally feel like there are some other aspects that could use some improvement, though I am at a loss to explain what these are exactly. In theory, everything is, as they say, all laid out on the table, with the game being both as streamlined and efficient as is humanly possible. 

Perhaps the issue of the ideal player count of being 4 players that could keep it from getting regular use for sure and affect the score for me — I don’t think I would ever want to play with less, and that could be a limiting factor for the game.

But, in writing my closing statements, I am realizing that perhaps I am posing a poor question in asking what is wrong with Winds of Numa Sera, instead of focusing on the fact that it does well enough in so many areas as to make the question needless. 

It may not be perfect, as all games with tension are bound to suffer in some way shape or form, but the game has indeed left me with a burning desire to try again for the purposes of re-evaluating.

And who knows, with time, I may find that I can better gauge my feeling on this particular game, but for now I am satisfied giving the game an 7.75 – 8 out of 10, knowing and remembering that many of my current favorite games that I would now rate a 9 or 10 also left me with great feelings of uncertainty and anxiety when initially evaluating. If this score ever changes for the better over time, you can bet that I will update my score both here and with designers Morgan Rosenblum and Jonny Handler, as I am still getting this gut feeling that things will indeed evolve for me over time.

While being quite different in what it procures and how it goes about doing so, “Winds of Numa Sera” will still always feel “special” for all that it manages to succeed in. 

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